Setting up multiple users in Puppy

Under development: PCMCIA, wireless, etc.
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Pizzasgood
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#46 Post by Pizzasgood »

Cool. I definitely want to make the next Pizzapup multi-user friendly, among other things, so I will come back to read this stuff in detail when I start working on that. For now I'm way to busy to think about multiuser, so I wanted to at least let you know there is interest in this and that it isn't being ignored. :)
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Farwater
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#47 Post by Farwater »

Thanks for your encouragement, Pizzasgood! I'm glad to hear at least one positive response, since I'd also like to see puppy multiuser.

In the meanwhile I've fixed a couple of bugs, made it work more stable and predictabe. The new version of the script is available for download from the current post.
Last edited by Farwater on Thu 27 Mar 2008, 10:48, edited 1 time in total.

Auda
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#48 Post by Auda »

I have been waiting for a multi-user puppy since um well I'm using 109ce and haven't seen a good reason to change. Grafpup 2 was looking very good but unfortunatly had a few bugs, mounting drives was my main one, then Nathan F. stopped working on it and now I see that grafpup.com is no more. If you and pazzasgood get a bugfree multi-user pup working you will have a real winner.
Keep up the good work
Auda

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jcoder24
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#49 Post by jcoder24 »

Auda wrote:and now I see that grafpup.com is no more.
That's because it was moved to grafpup.org
Auda wrote:Grafpup 2 was looking very good but unfortunately had a few bugs, mounting drives was my main one, then Nathan F. stopped working on it
Nathan stopped working on it because of a change in profession which left/leaves him with virtually no time to work on it. However, I think grafpup is an excellent puplet (in some ways ahead of its time) that can hopefully be continued as a community project.

Auda
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#50 Post by Auda »

That's because it was moved to grafpup.org
I was doing a cleanout of old bookmarks on a seconadry computer and many grafpup.com ones came up, I had forgotten that the address has changed.
Nathan stopped working on it because of a change in profession which left/leaves him with virtually no time to work on it
I had heard that, its a shame that there isn't a note to officialy say so on his news page, it looks like an abandonded project with the last news dated August 13th, 2007
that can hopefully be continued as a community project.
That would be good is there any work being done on it ?

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jcoder24
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#51 Post by jcoder24 »

Auda wrote:That would be good is there any work being done on it ?
Not yet

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Farwater
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#52 Post by Farwater »

Sorry for a noob's question. :oops: But I got stuck with enabling OOo for non-root users. No matter how (e.g. mount -o loop -w) hard I'm trying to remount the openoffice.org2.2.sfs file, still I can not modify the permissions of the files inside it.

So, my first question is: Is there a way to mount the .sfs in as writable for me to modify the GID of its /opt.

If not, then my second question is: Is copy-edit-CreateNewSFS for OOo the only way to change the permissions?

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Farwater
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#53 Post by Farwater »

A separate question suddenly came into my mind. Maybe, what I'm doing now is more relevant to do on dingo rather than on 3.01?

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Farwater
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A really updated version !

#54 Post by Farwater »

I updated the script (see the previous page of the forum) to its latest.

The difference from the previous version:

1. X is fully configured according to individual preferences of users (including a personal xorg.conf !!! )

2. Terminals are accessible and fully functional for all the users.

3. Bugs cleaned.

In other words, it's ALMOST functionally complete!

The only incompleteness is represented by OOo on frugal, which can be automatically integrated once the developers of .sfs kindly change the restictive rwx------ rule to, at least, rwx--x--x.

Of course, I can rebuild the sfs myself, but what's the point? The next version of OOo may come out with the same rwx------. So, for now I decided to give up.



As usual, a few notes on the design.

Giving credits to Barry, I have to admit that the initial user-centric design
was an advantage in my work now, rather than a disadvantage. When everything is collected in /root it's very easy to create a copy of it, add to it a local copy of /etc (to $HOME/.etc) and substitute in xwin, .xinitrc and xorgwizard scripts all the instances of root to $HOME and all the instances of /etc to $HOME/.etc. Yes, it's THAT easy. :)

The script, was tested on both frugal usb and a full-hd-install with puppy 3.01.

Now, your comments on how it works on your systems are highly appreciated. ;)

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rarsa
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#55 Post by rarsa »

Farwater wrote:Is there a way to mount the .sfs in as writable for me to modify the GID of its /opt.
First of all, I'm sure that the work you are doing will make a lot of people happy.

Second, sfs files are read only, you cannot mount them rw, but...

an sfs file is no more than a particular folder packaged with the mksquashfs utility.

So here is what you can do:

1. Mount the sfs file in a subdirectory (not on /)
2. Copy all the contents to another folder
3. Modify the access rights or the content as you see fit
4. Create a new sfs file using the mksquash command (http://www.penguin-soft.com/penguin/man ... ashfs.html)
for example
mksquashfs <folder> <filename>.sfs


This is, you don't modify the source sfs file, but you create a new one with the modified contents.
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Farwater
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#56 Post by Farwater »

Rarsa, thanks a lot for your encouragement! I´ll keep working on this topic, since I can see that people are interested in it!

With .sfs, knowing that, practically, one can not change the image, I just had a sightest hope (a dream) that there might be a magical trick in the world which would allow me to make a non-invasive (or, at least, a slightly invasive) change of the permissions. ;) Unfortunately, such silver bullet, apparently, does not exist in this world. :( Thank you for your reply anyway!

But, I guess, you would agree with my opinion that I better NOT rebuild an official sfs released not by me. ;)

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Farwater
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#57 Post by Farwater »

Updated the current version of the script. The only difference is that now it handles the error case when user specifies no arguments. All the rest is the same. Still works fine so far.

aladin
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I ran the script

#58 Post by aladin »

Farwater wrote:Updated the current version of the script. The only difference is that now it handles the error case when user specifies no arguments. All the rest is the same. Still works fine so far.
Hi, I ran the script and get the new user directory created , password set, but I wander how to set the puppy after boot because puppy doen't show a logon process.

I still have X11 running in root , without been able to enter my new Userid

Did I miss something ? What init to configure in order not to havs the X started as before ?

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Farwater
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#59 Post by Farwater »

Hi aladin,
It´s quite easy.

Edit /etc/inittab. You have 4 lines there. Make the second line identical to the third one (can copy-paste it). Save the file.
The commited change will result in prompting you for a login name and password every time you start puppy from now on.

To login as a different user immediatly you need to leave X to the prompt and type there:

Code: Select all

login myname
,where myname is the name of the user you´ve just created.
After entering the password you will login as myname
After that you will be able to start X again with something like

Code: Select all

xwin jwm
Please note that during your first login as a new user puppy will ask you to configure X. Only once. It´s OK, since from now on it will maintain personal display settings for each new X user.

If something still doesn´t work, please do not hesitate to ask me, since I´ll be really glad to improve what should be improved there.

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Farwater
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#60 Post by Farwater »

I've added a GUI version of the script to run it from X. Please see my original post for details.

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Farwater
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Finally done!

#61 Post by Farwater »

Here I've added a heavily modified version of the script. Now it looks more or less complete (or, at least, what I expected it to be).

Main differences:

1. The $HOMEs are created compact (from as low as 900 kb per $HOME)
2. Sound devices work well with non-root users.
3. The GUI modified to be more logical and neat.

Tested on puppy-3.01, various versions of puppyRUS (a Russian 3.01-based puplet) and dingo.

HOWTO:
1. unzip+untar the file.
2. chmod 755 xonemoreuser-en
3. Either click on it or ./xonemoreuser-en to launch.

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions and encouragement! :)
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xonemoreuser-en.tar.gz
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Farwater
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#62 Post by Farwater »

So far, the script seems to work ok, and some of the users required to have a graphical login window.
To provide them with that I decided to use XDM, since it's the most secure, stable and memory-efficient way out there.

So, attached to this message please find a pet-package with it. Besides a preconfigured version of XDM, it also contains a freshly compiled xsri - a tool to setup any jpg, png, etc. picture as a background for XDM login screen. After installing the package and rebooting you'll find yourself facing it.

The default picture I've chosen to be /usr/share/backgrounds/in_flight1600x1200 from our standard destribution of puppy 3.01. You can easily change it (as well as other display parameters) by editing the file /etc/X11/xdm/Xresources.

Uninstalling is not that easy though:

Uninstall the package with PetGet. After that you'll be sent to a console repeatedly printing some senseless messages. Just ignore them and press Ctrl-Alt-F2 to get to the second console. Login in a text mode and reboot. And your system is the way it was before XDM.
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Last edited by Farwater on Wed 07 May 2008, 17:19, edited 2 times in total.

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J-Bob
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#63 Post by J-Bob »

I think that the XDM dotpet and the xonemoreuser script are quite good. I hope to port xonemoreuser to Puppy 4, as well as bundle the tinylogin system to get it to work with Puppy 4.
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#64 Post by Irihapeti »

Maybe the issue with Open Office sfs not working has already been solved - if so, please ignore this.

I've noticed something that might be relevant. While experimenting with running the "official" (d/loaded from Mozilla) Firefox as a restricted user, I discovered that /opt is not accessible to restricted users at all. Open Office also installs itself in /opt. Maybe therein lies the problem.

I've tried the usual chown and chmod commands, without any success. I ended up putting Firefox in a different directory.

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Spanky
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#65 Post by Spanky »

I'm curious (confused, actually) as to the relationship between an SSH server, a VNC server and the current user.

I access my Puppy while on the road, over the internet. I currently run an SSH server and a VNC server as root and
access remotely as root.

Will either the SSH server or the VNC server have to be reconfigured to allow user access remotely?

As whom should log in at boot - root or user?

Can I log in as either remotely?

Spanky

BTW, my migration from root to user has been relatively easy. Once this issue is clarified, the migration should be complete. Thanks for all the effort, Farwater.

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